Psalm 57—John 20:24-29 Resurrection Flesh

This morning we’re finishing up our brief and abbreviated look at the Apostles’ Creed by reflecting on Jesus’ resurrection and what that means for us. Today’s sermon may be a little more teaching focused as this is an important and yet often confusing topic for some believers. The Apostles’ Creed teaches, “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.” One of the first places I turn to is the Heidelberg Catechism to find some understanding of what this is all about. Here we read “What comfort does the resurrection of the body offer you?” I always appreciate how the Catechism approaches our faith from the perspective of comfort. It goes on to say, “Not only shall my soul after this life immediately be taken up to Christ, my Head, but also this my flesh, raised by the power of Christ, shall be reunited with my soul and made like Christ's glorious body.”

When the Catechism talks about the comfort of resurrection, it talks about both our soul and our body. Often, the church has focused on the resurrection of the soul, leading to a number of heresies that led people to consider the body as something negative and the souls as somehow being more sacred. This meant that you could do whatever you wanted with your body, including adultery, and it wasn’t considered all that bad because it’s our soul that’s saved, not our bodies. I wonder if that kind of thinking is what shapes many people thinking about what happens to us after we die. I can’t count how often people have told me that when someone dies, they become angels.

Psalm 57 can even seem to lead us into that kind of thinking, that it’s our souls that are saved at death. Verse 1, “Have mercy on me, my God, have mercy on me, for in you I take refuge. I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed.” When David writes this, he’s running away from Saul, who wants to kill him. David’s hiding in a cave and Saul’s close by. David has an opportunity to kill Saul and protect his own life, but David refuses because God put Saul on the throne, so how could he ever think of overthrowing God’s decision, David honours Saul instead. Something to think about when we don’t like our own leaders.

When David writes this psalm, he uses a word, nepes, or nephesh, which translates as soul, life or personality when he talks about taking refuge in God. Because the psalms are poetry, it can be difficult sometimes to translate, so it could be translated “in you my soul, or my life, or my personality takes refuge.” But the point of the psalm is not what part of David takes refuge in God, but that God is a faithful and loving God, worthy to be praised, even in times of distress and danger and we can turn to him knowing that God will protect us. No matter what is happening, David is focused on God’s glory. This is why it’s important to read the psalm in the way it was intended to be read, with the theme of God’s faithfulness and love the focus.

This is why Jesus’ resurrection and meeting with his disciples, especially Thomas is important, it emphasizes Jesus’ physical resurrection. Thomas isn’t around when Jesus appears to the rest of the disciples. Thomas has a hard time believing that Jesus is actually, physically alive. If we’re honest with ourselves, physical resurrection isn’t always easy to wrap our minds around. One of the parts of the result of the fall into sin, as we read in Genesis 3, is that, “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” I’m sure that Thomas is thinking something like how does resurrection happen?

In the New Testament we see a number of resurrections by Jesus. When Jesus was on earth, he raised three people from the dead: the widow’s son in the village of Nain, the 12-year-old daughter of Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue, and Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha in Bethany after he had been dead four days. When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, even his sister Martha has a hard time believing it could happen, saying, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” That’s when Jesus tells her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” When I listen to Jesus’ words as if I’m there at the time, it all sounds as clear as mud to me. Resurrection is always the exception rather than the rule, and each of the people Jesus raised from the dead end up dying again.

Michael Horton writes about the work of the Holy Spirit and the physical creation, “Abraham Kuyper argues that there is always a subtle Marcionite temptation to imagine that the God of creation is somehow other than the God of redemption—and that perhaps the latter saves us from the former.” Michael Horton, using biblical poetic imagery, writes that the biblical story is that of a God who redeems his own creation, that Jesus becomes physically human just like us, and the Spirit turns a barren desert, because of sin, into a blossoming orchard, because of grace. The physical creation is important to God, it’s his creation and he created us in his image as physical creatures, which is why redemption is seen and understood as including all creation, including our physical body and the entire physical universe.

Marcion of Asia Minor believed that the God of the Old Testament was different from the God of the New Testament; one representing justice, the other goodness; one an angry god who demanded justice and had created the physical world which man, both body and soul, was a part. The other god, according to Marcion, was completely indescribable and had little connection to the created universe. Out of sheer goodness, he sent his son Jesus Christ to save man from the material world and bring him to a new home. To Marcion, the material world was bad, the spiritual was good.

This way of thinking has gained traction in the church at various times in history, but is wrong. God does not give up on this material world, because this means Satan’s plan to claim this world for his own wins, to mess up God’s work of creation fails, but Scripture is clear that Jesus wins. Satan’s just part of creation, a creature, and Jesus is the creator and does not give up on what he created. For developing and teaching these ideas, Marcion was kicked out of the church in 144 AD as a heretic, but the movement he headed became both widespread and powerful.

Michael Horton writes, “The world will be different, but there will not be a different world.” When Jesus returns, the Bible tells us that all those who’ve died will be with Jesus as he comes to redeem and restore the earth. We get a picture in Revelation of a creation healed and restored as Satan is defeated once and for all and there will be no more death, or mourning or crying or pain. Paul writes in Philippians 3, “But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.” Just as Thomas was able to touch Jesus’ wounds, in the same way we’ll also be raised up with transformed bodies, physical bodies to live on a physical earth, bodies we can touch.

Jesus’ resurrection is important because it reminds us that our bodies are important and we need to treat ours, and everyone else’s bodies with respect. It reminds us that when we receive our renewed bodies, that the diseases, the brokenness in our bodies that come from life, that come from addictions and brokenness in our souls, bodies that we may not love, are all precious to God and that Jesus brings healing and wholeness. It reminds us that the physical creation is important and it calls us back to our original call to be stewards of this creation gift God has given to us to look after. The resurrection takes the soul that David refers to and reassures us that it will be reunited to our physical bodies again after death. I’m not sure exactly how that will work, that’s the work of the Holy Spirit that first shaped us and formed us in the womb, and who has the power to reunite our body and soul again.

Jesus appeared to his disciples to fill them with his Spirit to send them out to bring the good news of salvation and redemption and show the world our whole person, body and soul, is precious to God and is saved and redeemed through Jesus’ sacrifice for us.